Analysis

While Waterfall is a pronoun piece in Roger’s collection and resides in the National Gallery, very little information was provided about the work in the gallery, nor online; not even a single image online for the work is available through the Gallery’s site nor the entirety of the web. However, with Brown creating the piece shortly after his Disaster Landscapes series I believe his intentions lie within describing a natural and societal disastrous issue. Being created in the 1970’s, industrial expansion and war becomes prevalent. I believe Brown is reminiscing on the American Indians lifestyle and how they lived in peace compared to how we lived as Americans in an industrial society. He looked to create works that were conceptually mesmerizing and with using solely just a waterfall and river flow, he does so by making the eye flow as the river does down the canvas. The

work creates a boring landscape and turns it into a beautiful, eye-catching piece that makes you wonder what the deeper meaning behind the work is. Using the dark silhouette figures to describe the Indians, mystery and curiosity is sparked for a piece that looks to be just solely recreating a simple landscape. I believe the main meaning behind this piece is to describe a landscape that is no longer apparent in our world today, Native American Indians are hardly capable of living in a tribal format, along river banks with competing tribes for example, due to the excess of migration of people into America. I believe Brown is trying to show the beauty of how these people used to live by creating this beautiful landscape based around the Indians village, to raise awareness to the public of how much damage we have done to these Native people. If viewing the piece through that context, I believe the work is successful, it is a very eye-catching piece that manages to open the viewers eyes to what we have done as a species, and manages to make the viewer look deeper into the piece itself to see the beauty of the colors and the clarity of the environment compared to the dark, grim pollution the hundreds of factories and mills that during this time would have been created when replacing these Indian villages to supply their Industrial advantages.

 Personally, I believe the work is created near perfectly, the waterfall creates a life to the river, just as the strong blue and brown colors create a life to the work as a whole. While it may take a lot of thought behind the context of the work, I believe Rogers initial goal was to create art of a beautiful landscape, and the deeper meaning behind the piece followed so the viewer was to get attached to the piece at first glance only to stick around to find out more about it after viewing deeply. Overall I believe the art work is one of the most amazing pieces I have ever seen in person and would recommend for anyone going to the National Gallery to sit and take a look into the piece for several minutes rather than a brief glance.